Choice Hotels has announced some changes to its loyalty program today and it’s great news overall. While there might be a downside with one of these changes (which might not even be a downside at all), Choice Privileges will become a much more viable program for those who like to plan their award travel far in advance.
Increased Booking Window
One of the biggest – if not the biggest – frustrations people have had with the Choice Privileges program over the years is that they haven’t let you book award nights more than 100 days out. That’s made it hard to plan for award stays with them far in advance because a) there’s no guarantee there’ll be any award availability until just over three months ahead of time and b) there’s no way to know for sure what that award pricing will even be if and when award nights became available.
That’ll be changing from early 2025 as Choice will allow you to book award nights up to 50 weeks in advance. That’s a massive and welcome improvement, even if it does come many years later than it should have.
This is particularly good news for me because one of my five predictions for 2025 was the following:
Now that Choice has integrated Radisson Rewards Americas properties into their portfolio, I wouldn’t be surprised if their next step will be for them to revamp their loyalty program. I wouldn’t have high hopes about them introducing anything groundbreaking, but they will hopefully introduce more worthwhile elite status benefits and – perhaps most importantly – will let you book award stays more than 100 days out.
This would take a bit of time to implement, so my prediction is that we’ll get an announcement – and some limited details – of the revamp in 2024, with the changes to actually take place in 2025.
I’m particularly proud of that second paragraph where I predicted they’d make an announcement in 2024 for changes that’ll come in 2025 😉 What I’m a little surprised by is the fact that Choice doesn’t seem to be improving its elite program, unless an announcement about those kind of elite status changes will be coming later seeing as the three parts of this announcement relate to award bookings.
RewardSaver Award Nights
The minimum redemption for an award night at a Choice property is currently 8,000 points. Choice will be reintroducing RewardSaver award nights that’ll start at 6,000 points. To be honest, I don’t remember ever hearing about RewardSavers in the past, so I don’t know if that’s a feature from many a bygone era or if they’re simply rebranding their current Sweet Spot Rewards as RewardSaver.
Book Premium Rooms With Points
The third prong of Choice’s announcement is that from early 2025 you’ll be able to book premium rooms with points, presumably at a more expensive rate than its standard award cost.
This is where we’re a little more apprehensive about these upcoming changes. For a long time there have been many Choice properties where you could book premium rooms for a standard number of points (see this post for some examples from when Choice integrated Radisson). What we’re waiting to see is if those premium rooms that were formerly bookable for a standard number of points will become more expensive, or if Choice will simply be expanding the number of premium rooms that will be bookable with points.
No Devaluation – For Now
In the information we received from Choice regarding these updates, they highlighted that the minimum cost of award nights would be dropping from 8,000 points per night to 6,000 courtesy of the RewardSaver feature. What wasn’t said was if the maximum cost of award nights would be increasing. That made me curious if there’ll be a devaluation once the positive changes listed above come into force.
We therefore asked our Choice rep about that and they confirmed that the maximum award cost won’t be increasing at this time. We also asked if Choice is planning a revaluation of award pricing overall as part of these changes and they confirmed that won’t be happening at this time either.
That obviously still leaves the door open for them changing the maximum award price and revaluing properties at some point in the future, but that’s to be expected. For now at least, it’ll be possible to book awards almost a year out without having to immediately worry that the award pricing will also jump when that becomes available.
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I see this as a devaluation. Breaking out premium rooms will allow hotels to unrestictedly jack up prices. Also, goodbye getting a 2-bedroom for a regular price.
This is beyond uncharacteristic of this company and I expect management to come out with changes that will take care of it in a way that only Choice Hotels can, sad.
I’m curious if anyone else has observed this: a commenter on Doctor of Credit says that a number of properties were bumped up a category and are now more expensive, without corresponding category drops for other properties.
I just hope they don’t wreck award redemptions for Scandinavia with Strawberry Hotels. Currently great options for 12-16k points.
Awesome news. I’ve rarely made use of Choice points as it always seems the property we are at is in their peak pricing period where it still doesn’t make sense relative to cash, but I’ve seen other times of year it would great. No availability is often a killer because of the limited 100 day booking window.
Will be interesting to see if the Friends & Family rate for employees also extends out. It had the same 100 day booking limitation so I’ve got to imagine the technical changes on the back end will benefit that as well.
I’ve never booked a Choice property but, in theory, the change to far-out booking would be a disadvantage for me. I rarely book hotels 100 hours before the stay, let alone 100 days, so anything that discourages other people from booking awards is good for me.
Okay Larry, that’s very selfish of you.
Livin’ on the edge Leisure Suit!
Joy to the world. I have 1M points–mostly from the Radisson days, but the 100 day reward booking limitation makes it nearly impossible to book prime locations overseas.
Great news! Finally!
This makes Choice (and Citi / Wells Fargo) more appealing.
Thanks Mr. Pepper!
Dugroz here………. with….. Dugroz reports
The 100 days -> 50 week change is obviously welcome broadly. And in my particular case, I have a trip to Tokyo for next Sep that could make use of Choice award nights.
I may have to upgrade back to a Citi Strata Premier so I can transfer my TYP, though I do have the WF Autograph Journey (but maybe not enough total points for that trip).
Very nice for anyone buzzing around Japan since Comforts are everywhere & typically 8k, 12k or infrequently 16k per night.
Yup. We live here and everything else is obscenely expensive once the borders were opened. It’s a shame because locals are mostly priced out of domestic hotels now. A few nights in hotels now costs more than a month of rent to live here it’s crazy.
This is certainly positive news. I guess a question is whether and to what extent this will carry over to the Preferred Hotels bookings. Being able to book enhanced rooms and suites within that network would be icing on the cake.
When it comes to the Choice points, I always feel like it’s “If you know, you know”, and this makes it even better. Also a boon for TYP and WF 1:2 transfers.